Texas carries out 1st execution in US since Christa Pike botch

Updated Oct. 7, 2026, 10:19 p.m. ET

Texas has carried out the first execution in the U.S. since Tennessee’s botched lethal injection of Christa Pike.

Texas executed Jamaal Howard, 46, with a lethal injection of pentobarbital on Oct. 7 despite concerns that it was the same drug used in Pike’s execution and that Howard was too intellectually disabled to be put to death.

Howard, who was pronounced dead at 8:03 p.m. CT, was convicted of the 2000 murder of a mother of three named Vickie Swartout during a gas station robbery in Silsbee, a small town just northeast of Houston. Howard became the seventh inmate executed in Texas this year and the 30th in the nation.

Howard’s execution comes as the lethal injection method sits under a microscope following two botched executions in four months in Tennessee: The case of Pike one week ago and that of Tony Carruthers in May.

Attorneys believe that Pike’s IV lines were improperly placed or that Pike’s veins had blown, causing some or all of the pentobarbital to enter her arm’s soft tissue rather than her bloodstream. In Carruthers’ case, executioners failed to establish a second IV line required under the state’s execution protocol and couldn’t place a central line.

In the wake of Pike’s botched execution, Howard’s attorneys asked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to issue a 30-day reprieve so that they could get records about when the pentobarbital was purchased, how it was stored and what testing it has undergone.

Abbott’s office did not respond to their request and did not respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment.

Howard’s attorneys also filed a motion for a stay of execution in the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals on Oct. 7, arguing that it’s “troubling” that the state’s Department of Criminal Justice has “withheld all information about its execution drugs comes on the heels of Ms. Pike’s failed execution.” The court denied the stay without issuing an opinion, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene later in the day.

Here’s what else you need to know about Howard’s execution.

Jamaal Howard’s attorneys fought to stop execution

In arguing for a reprieve for Howard, his attorneys wrote to the governor that the repercussions of failed executions “fall not only on the condemned but on the officers who carry out executions, on the families of victims who are promised a resolution that does not come, and on public confidence in the State’s capacity to carry out its most serious act.”

They told Abbott that Howard “should not be executed with a drug whose history the State has refused to let his lawyers see, within days of the same drug failing in another state.”

Howard’s spiritual adviser previously told USA TODAY that Tennessee’s recent botches were creating “a tremendous amount of anxiety” for Howard.

“One of these executions could be botched at any time and at any place,” said the Rev. Jeff Hood. “What happened in Tennessee shows all of us what’s possible. … Instead of trying to get ourselves to places where we limit the horrifying situations, we perpetuate them and call them normal.”

In addition to appealing to the governor to intervene, Howard’s attorneys asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the execution on Oct. 6. That request doesn’t mention Pike but focuses on Howard’s intellectual disabilities.

“No court has ever decided whether Howard is intellectually disabled under the clinical standards that govern today,” they wrote, saying that he has an IQ as low as 70. “Howard’s evidence of significantly subaverage intellectual functioning is not reasonably disputable.”

The state called Howard’s claims “meritless” in its reply filed in the Supreme Court on Oct. 7. Quoting a court ruling earlier this year, they said Howard needed to raise his most recent claims sooner, and that he “acted with unclean hands” and “manufactured a sense of urgency that could have been averted by an earlier filing.”

“Twenty-six years have passed since Howard murdered Vickie Swartout,” the state wrote. “Justice for Howard’s victims should be denied no longer.”

Following the execution, Hood told anti-death penalty supporters gathered outside the prison that Howard had trouble understanding the commands of prison staff and difficulty saying his final words. He added that Howard forgot who Hood was at a visit a week prior to the execution.

He said: “We’re not talking about somebody that was functioning in a way of being competent.”

What were Jamaal Howard’s last words?

Howard’s last words were of regret for what he did and love for his family and friends.

“I apologize (to the) Swartout family … and I wish you had closure and peace,” he said. “I wish that you accept my apology, and I wish for your forgiveness. I’m sorry for what happened.”

He thanked someone named Natalie for “helping me come out of my darkness” and “the deepest times in my life,” and thanked Hood for getting him “in a good state of mind to find peace and the Lord.”

“I thank y’all,” he continued. “Hey, enjoy life, and peace to y’all. Warden, that’s it, I’m ready.”

What did Jamaal Howard do?

Just before lunchtime on May 12, 2000, 42-year-old clerk Vickie Swartout was working alone inside a Chevron gas station when then-20-year-old Jamaal Howard walked in.

Surveillance footage showed that Howard immediately walked up to Swartout, pointed a Colt .32-caliber gun at her and fired. The gun failed to go off and Swartout screamed. Howard then cocked the gun and then shot her in the chest, court records show.

Howard stole some cigarettes and $114 from the cash register, and as Swartout lay dying, he asked her: “Do you have any more money in here?” according to the surveillance video cited in court records. Howard then fled and Swartout died within minutes.

Tom Nelson, Silsbee’s police chief at the time, told reporters that investigators found Howard hiding in a closet in a home next door to his grandparent’s house.

“He was grinning from ear to ear,” Texas Ranger L.C. Wilson testified at Howard’s trial, according to an archived story in the Beaumont Enterprise.

Howard’s defense attorney at the time, Tyrone Moncriffe, acknowledged that his client killed Swartout but said that Howard was insane and “probably needs to be locked up for the rest of his life in an asylum,” the Enterprise reported.

Prosecutor Perry Thomas argued that nothing Howard did on the day of the murder indicated insanity.

“He pulled the trigger at Vickie, and when the gun didn’t go off, he cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger again,” Thomas said, according to the Enterprise. “He ran home. He took off the cap and shirt he was wearing. He hid in a closet in an abandoned house nearby.”

Thomas added: “He knows exactly what he’s done. He knew that day.”

Jurors found Howard guilty of capital murder after less than three hours of deliberations. They rejected the option to find Howard not guilty by reason of insanity.

What has Vickie Swartout’s mother said about the execution?

Swartout’s mother, JoAnne Swartout, died in 2024 but previously said that she was devastated by her daughter’s murder.

“Vickie was a kind and loving person and her death tore us apart,” she told the Enterprise in 2001.

She added that she thought the death sentence was appropriate for her daughter’s killer.

“I believe he deserves to die for his crime,” she said, adding that she sympathized with Howard’s heartbroken family. “I feel very bad for his mother … but I can’t overlook what he did.”

When is the next execution in the U.S.?

The next execution in the U.S. is set to be carried out in Florida on Oct. 13. The state is expected to use a lethal injection to execute James Robertson, a prisoner who had been in jail for nearly 30 years when he decided to kill his cellmate, Frank Hart, because he was tired of his situation and wanted to get on death row, reported the Daytona Beach News-Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network.

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